Mohandas Gandhi

The Salt March and its Consequences

"Constructive Work" and World War II, page 2

page 1 of 2

From 1934 until the outbreak of war in 1939, Gandhi left
the struggle for political independence to others. He began traveling through
India again, working with women and children, helping untouchables,
and promoting use of the spinning wheel. He went from village
to village, preaching his gospel of cleanliness, harmony, and love,
barefoot and on the road for months at a time. Eventually, he
began advocating what he called "Basic Education": based in part
on the Montessori system developed in Italy, it was a form of schooling
that combined books with practical education, a necessity for the
poor peasants he was trying to reach.

Later, nearly everyone in India would claim to have seen
Gandhi at one time or another during this period of wandering.
Meanwhile, politics went on without him. Politicians continued
to consult him, of course, but the Congress was now being guided
by its rising star, the charismatic and intelligent Nehru. And
the march to independence continued, aided greatly by the Government
of India Act, which passed Parliament in 1935 (and led the ardently
imperialist Churchill to resign from the cabinet). The Act's ultimate
goal, however–an Indian federation that would unite all the provinces and
princely states–was rejected by the Congress and their increasingly
fractious adversaries in Jinnah's Muslim League.

But the ancillary provisions of the Act went into effect
anyway, and by 1937 local legislatures, made up of elected Indians,
held effective control on the provincial level. On the national
level, though, the British still ruled India, and British and Indians
alike tensely questioned what sort of legitimate government could
be forged out of the growing Muslim-Hindu rift. The Congress,
now enmeshed in local government issues and on its way to becoming
the Congress Party that would dominate Indian politics for decades, continued
to agitate for immediate independence. However, it remained unclear,
as it had been at the Round Table Conference in 1931, how a national
Indian government could work.

It was World War
II that finally brought the itinerant saint-politician
back into public life. After war broke out in September 1939, the
British immediately brought India into the conflict without consulting
the nationalist leadership. Even as howls of outrage rose from
the Congress and the Muslim League, Gandhi was invited to see the
Viceroy, now Lord Linlithgow. Having never lost his deep respect
for Britain, and detesting Nazism as "naked ruthless force reduced
to an exact science," Gandhi pledged his personal support to Britain
and the allies. Nehru, however, was less excited by the idea of
aiding the Empire's war effort, and along with the other Congress
leaders, he drafted a manifesto that essentially asked for complete
independence in return for Indian support against the Nazis. Gandhi,
unhappy at taking advantage of Britain's weakness (it was now 1940,
and the Germans were rolling across France), reluctantly went along.

Gandhi's support was immaterial–Churchill was now in command
of Britain, and he had no intention of allowing Indian independence,
certainly not in war- time, and not with the issue of minorities
(Muslims, practically speaking) still unresolved. Nehru's demand
was turned down, and now Gandhi, previously unwilling to further
debilitate the British in their time of struggle, agreed to a small-scale
campaign of civil disobedience, in which only the Congress leaders
went to jail. This small-scale campaign lasted until 1942, when
Sir Stafford Cripps arrived on the subcontinent, offering India
Dominion status in the British Commonwealth after the war (which
meant de facto independence, since a nation could leave the Commonwealth
at any time). The Congress might have accepted this, however the
proposals also insisted–in an effort to deal with the Muslim problem–that
any province would have the right to secede from the Dominion.
This Gandhi and the rest of the Congress could not accept, since
it would mean the "vivisection" of India.

Of course, as it was, vivisection was to accompany independence anyway,
in the form of the partition, so it is worth asking if the Indian
nationalists would have been better off hammering out the agreement
in 1942, when the country was on a war-time footing and British
troops could have maintained order. As it was, independence came
only in 1947, and the country collapsed into chaos. Alternatively,
we might ask if the British should have acceded to the Congress'
demands for immediate independence, and used their troops to police
India while Nehru and others established a national government
for the subcontinent. Both ideas, though appealing, are ultimately
pure fancy–in 1942 or 1947, Jinnah and the Muslim League were unlikely
to accept a national government that would have inevitably been
dominated by Hindus (as they were the group already in power),
regardless of whether British troops remained or not; and a partition
in 1942 would never have been accepted by a Congress that still
hoped to rule a united India.